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Friday, January 8, 2016

The Amazing Banana is Magic!

Actually, no it isn't. While bananas are a good addition to your overall food plan (they contain potassium, and some fiber, Vitamin A, C, B6, and magnesium, but they also contain sugars) they wouldn't be good as your only food source (unless you're stuck on a deserted island that only has banana trees ... better bananas than starvation, right?).

This is where we talk about the "diet" ... the "Banana and Skim Milk" diet. Oh yeah, there was such a thing and in fact, it can still be found today all over the web. On it's own, it isn't a healthy diet plan for long-term use. But does it work? Yep, sure it does if you stick to it. Why wouldn't it? It reduces your calorie intake, like ANY working diet plan, but it is so not fun, not even if you love bananas. At the end of it, you will not only not love bananas any longer, you'll hate them. Hate the sight of them. At least for a while.Of course I tried this diet. I liked bananas, and all we really drank at home was skim milk (oh ... yeah, when I was little we couldn't always afford "real" milk so we had powdered skim milk ... ugh. So disgusting!) so this figured to be an easy diet for me. And just so you know, I wasn't really a "kid" any longer when I tried this one. I was 19 and it was just a week and a few days before my wedding day when I started it, and stayed on it for the prescribed 7 days.

The plan really doesn't have much in the way if requirements. You can eat up to 9 small/medium bananas and 9 glasses (8 oz.) of skim milk per day. Eat them together as a meal (I mean one banana and one glass of milk together), or eat the banana and have the milk an hour later. However you want to have them. Personally, I could never eat 9 bananas in a day and I think the most I ever ate was 6, along with the milk.

By day 3, the scale was beginning to show results ... so was my stomach. It was already sick of the regimen, but I was pretty determined to look as good as I could on my wedding day. By the seventh day, when I stepped on the scale I was delighted to find that I'd lost 15 pounds, which I didn't think was even possible in only 7 days. The rest of me was delighted to be finished with the bananas. Even more delighted than at the weight loss. While it did the job (the diet I mean), I've never done it again, and don't think I would subject myself to that sort of strict regimen again - not for anything. Besides, you gain it back fairly quickly (within a few months in fact) so while it's good for quick and immediate results, like other fad diets, the results aren't lasting.

Unfortunately for me, the diet actually backfired a little. My wedding dress arrived at my house only a few hours before the wedding. One of my aunt's made it for me ... all beautifully lined and everything. Not a fussy dress, but we didn't have enough time or money to buy one (planned and executed the wedding in less than 5 weeks), but not something that could be altered quickly because of the lining.

My aunt of course had me try the dress on weeks before at her house (over an hour and a half away from where we lived) when it was only partly finished, and fitted it to me as I was then. When I put it on right before the wedding it was too big (15 pounds can make a lot of difference) and hung in spots where it shouldn't. We tied the sash tighter, but couldn't fix the top or shoulders. I had to pin it to my undergarment to keep it from falling off my top half. That part was bad enough, but even worse was the fact that the undergarment didn't fit any longer either ... I ended up having to stuff the cups with half a box of kleenex in each one.

So just a word of warning ladies ... make sure you try whatever it is you plan to wear after this diet BEFORE the day you need to wear it.